Letter of the General Council to the Alliance of Socialist DemocracyMarch 9, 1869

Written: in French and English and adopted by the General Council, March 9 1869 and issued to all International sections;First published: in the pamphlet Les Prétendues scissons dans l'Internationale, Geneva, 1872.

Citizens:

According to Article I of its Statutes, the International Working
Men's Association admits "all working men's societies... aiming at the
same end, viz., the protection, advancement, and complete emancipation
of the working classes".

Since the various sections of workingmen in the same country,
and the working classes in different countries, are placed under different
circumstances and have attained to different degrees of development, it
seems almost necessary that the theoretical notions which reflect the real
movement should also diverge.

The community of action, however, called into life by the the
International Working Men's Association, the exchange of ideas facilitated
by the public organs of different national section, and the direct debates
at the General Congresses are sure by and by to engender a common theoretical
program.

Consequently, it belongs not to the function of the General Council
to subject the program of the Alliance to a critical examination. We have
not to inquire whether, yes or no, it be a true scientific expression of
the working-class movement. All we have to ask is whether its general tendency
does not run against the general tendency of the International Working
Men's Association, viz., the complete emancipation of the working class?

One phrase in your program lies open to this objection. It occurs
[in] Article 2:

["The Alliance wants above all political, economic, and social
equalization... of classes."]

The "egalisation des classes", literally interpreted, comes to the "harmony
of capital and labor" ("l'harmonie du capital et du travail") so persistently
preached by the bourgeois socialists. It is not the logically impossible
"equalization of classes", but the historically necessary, superseding
"abolition of classes" (abolition des classes), this true secret of the
proletarian movement, which forms the great aim of the International Working
Men's Association.

Considering, however, the context in which that phrase "egalisation
des classes" occurs, it seems to be a mere slip of the pen, and the General
Council feels confident that you will be anxious to remove from your program
an expression which offers such a dangerous misunderstanding.

It suits the principles of the International Working Men's Association
to let every section freely shape its own theoretical program, except the
single case of an infringement upon its general tendency. There exists,
therefore, no obstacle to the transformation of the sections of the Alliance
into sections of the International Working Men's Association.

The dissolution of the Alliance and the entrance of its sections
into the International Working Men's Association once settled, it would,
according to our Regulations, become necessary to inform the General Council
of the residence and the numerical strength of each new section.